When the “The Wizard of Oz at Spare” opens the Las Vegas strip on August 28, the audience would experience the 1939 film Classic, thus its creators probably never thought of possible.
People will find themselves in the eyes of the tornado, which removes Dorothy’s Kansas Farmhouse from its marshes and hurts it on Manchkinland. The film has been extended to fill a 160,000 square-foot wall of LED panels, spreading three football grounds, surrounds the audience and elevates 22 stories, as fans of the 750-Horsepower kicks wind and debris to simulate the twister.
The spectacle is more than $ 104 or more per seat. “The Wizard of Oz” marks one of the most important partnership between a studio and technology company to use artificial intelligence to create a new media experience.
Reuters spoke to nine people, in which the principal was directly among the projects and senior entertainment industry experts, who told the story behind a project that some industry veterans watched as a possible watershed moment in the use of Hollywood’s AI Tools.
“It certainly represents a truly meaningful milestone in the AI-human creative cooperation,” said Emarsiv Arts and Emerging Technologies agent in CAA. “I think it will set an example on how we redefine culturally important media.”
Bringing Dorothy and wicked witches into a large -scale area, a globe -shaped entertainment site, which featured advanced technology, took two years and brought more than 2,000 people together in their creative team, Warner Bros. Discovery officials, Deputy researchers of Google, Deepened researchers, academics, visual effects artists, or all together.
Hollywood developed during acute apprehension on AI’s impact on jobs and the desire to preserve human creativity. Some visual impact companies initially approached the project to work on, as they were not allowed to work with AI at that time.
Arriving here, Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Jaslav, his studio heads and lawyers were taken blessings, who established guidelines to use AI. “Vizard of Oz at Sprey” attracted arithmetic materials from the film, which included some 60 research papers to help distribute the film in the resolution representing the set blueprint, shot list, promotional paintings and film artifacts as well as ten times the previous work.
Ben Grosman said, “We had to resume cinematography, we had to re -edit, and we had to do all this without changing the experience.” “Because if you touch anything about this sacred piece of cinema, you are toast!”
Instead of exploiting AI to cut jobs, he used it to breathe fresh life in a classic story and create new experiences with existing intellectual property.
“Hollywood embraces new technology, and not everyone can wait for another to use it,” said an experienced filmmaker Buzz Hazes, who leads the entertainment industry solution group of Google Cloud. “Is’ The Wizard of Oz ‘is doing for us, he is giving the first opportunity where people go,’ Oh my God, this is not at all that I thought was going to be AI.”
The project began in 2023, in which the officials of the Sphaer were discussed which project would carry forward the technical boundaries of the location that had already hosted the “Postcard from Earth” of U2 and Darren Eronofski.
“The Vizard of Oz” topped the list as an acquaintance, cute film, which is well suited to the spacious canvas of the shells, which said Caroline Blackwood, the head of the studio. It presented an opportunity to re -introduce a new generation to the classic, which would place them inside the world of El Frank Bome.
Symbolically, the team chose a classic film which was a technical miracle of its time. While the technicler is not the first film to use, “The Vizard of Oz Ke” dramatic infection for a hyper-set color from Sepia tone marked a cinematic milestone.
Spare Entertainment CEO James Dolan and Creative collaboratory Jane Rosanthal, co-founder and noted filmmaker of Tribeca Film Festival, imagined a more ambitious project than a classic’s only digital removering. Rosenthal tapped Hays to bring Google as a technical partner.
Dlann approached a friend and business partner Warner Brothers Discovery CEO Zaslav from early days of cable TV to propose to bring “oz” to the area. “I just went to the area with a friend and was actually blown up,” Jaslav said, Dlann and Rosanthal also won their studio heads, “The idea was that it was an example of the great IP that we do in Warner Brothers.”
Before turning on one of the world’s most important entertainment properties, Warner Brothers set strict ground rules. Google can train his generic AI model on each major actor to reproduce its performance, but will remain the property of the data studio. None of the “Oz” training data will be included in the public AI model of Google.
“One of the important things important to start this project was creating a safe place for experiment,” said Grosman. “Warner Brothers and Google and The Safier created an environment where he said,” We do not know how it is going to end, but we are going to create a little quarantine area here. “
The Visual Effects team initially tried to enhance images using CGI, which would have created a photoretic animated version of the characters. That approach was rejected as it would violate the integrity of original performances.
“AI was an effectively one last solution, as we could not actually do it in any other way,” said Grosman, whose Los Angeles Studio, Magnopus, worked as Dis Disney’s “The Lion King” on such photo-ethical computer animated films.
AI increased the resolve of small cellulide frames for ultra-high-definition images from 1939. This restored the details, such as the burlap texture on the face of the freckle or scarecrow on the face of Dorothy, unclear from the process of technicler. AI also helped the “outpant” on-screen images to fill the gap created by the camera cut or framing, when it took a close-up of the tin, which cuts the image of the Woodman by cutting a door to the witch’s palace with an ax to free the dorothy.
It took months to repeatedly fine-tuning and Google’s Deepmind Brain Trust to elevate the consumer-grade AI tools to distribute crisp images with months “super” resolution of months.
The musicians re -recorded the entire film score on the original sound stage to avail the 167,000 speakers of the site. Judy Garland and other actors are vocal performance Aning.
Despite focusing on authenticity, the project has attracted criticism from some cinefiles that object to changing the fundamental film. Entertainment author Joshua Riviera called it “a crime for art and nature”.
Rosanthal said, “None of them have criticized whether the film has been seen or understood what we are doing.”
At a private midnight screening for Reuters, Grosman presented a glimpse of the coming time.
Some changes are subtle, when uncle Henry stands through the front door while neighboring Almira Gulch Toto. The AI ​​keeps the artist, who spends more time about his time, in the back frame, sewing a broad view together to fill the area’s expansion aircraft.
The purpose of other changes is to feel the vision of the filmmakers, which were not technically possible 86 years ago, as Dorothy and Friends the Emerald Throne Room, the 200 -foot -high green head swinging on the audience, the emergence of the eyes and the voice bouncing in the voice, the emeror impossing with the original image of an actor.
“Whenever we made a change, it was because we wanted the audience to experience that Dorothy was experiencing directly.” “We fulfilled something that the filmmakers were intended to do, but were limited to 1939 equipment.
Coordinated physical effects add another dimension. Flying monkeys will be pounced in the shells as a Simian filled with 16-foot long hilium run by drone operators, one of the four-D effects.
The result is a amalgamation of cinema, live production and experienced VR. “I think people are going to change the way people think about entertainment and experience,” Growsman said.
